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03.03.2019 - PvP updates with a welcome to Shenk!

Pet battle PvP has never been my strong suit, making me rely entirely on other people to provide content for this part of the pet battling world. The latest newcomer to the Xu-Fu team kindly offered to provide his knowledge on that, admittedly lacking, part of the page: Welcome to Shenk!

The first new section up is focusing on the achievement Family Brawler, providing teams for every family right there, but you are of course more than welcome to add your own teams and ideas or leave comments.

Thank you so much, Shenk, for thinking up the idea of using the PvE strat layout for PvP teams! It's a great idea! I look forward to reading people's suggestions, and figuring out new ways to expand the format and get discussions going!

Long time no proper announcement, it’s time to change that! And not just because WoW just turned 14 in Europe - Congrats to that!

But there is another thing that’s overdue to mention:
For a couple of weeks now, Xu-Fu has seen some immense improvements. Most notably in loading times, which are reduced drastically, but there have been changes in the background in most areas that make the page faster, more flexible and more secure. All of that is thanks to Schlumpf!

Piece by piece he has worked through my own code and optimised it, changed it or replaced it with much better versions. I am immensely grateful for all the help and wanted to make sure that it’s known who you need to thank for all the recent improvements.

Hi, love the work everyone does here. I just had a question/observation regarding the improvements. I don't seem to be able to hover over the Alternatives in IE, but it still works with Chrome. Is this known/intended?

In the last weeks I had much personal stuff to do, but today was reserved for Xu-Fu and was able to catch up with a lot of stuff! The list is longer than usual, hang tight ^^

1. Giveaway winnerSadly Machiavelli never claimed his Cap’n Crackers, so I had to draw yet another winner. This time it goes to:

SeiriCerin#2343 as shown in this super cute image!
Please get back to me within 2 days to grab your loot code :-)

2. New addition to the teamNot exactly “new”, Jagûar has been around for a long time and worked very hard to get the entire Falcosaur strategy section up and filled with strategies! Strategy Curator is only a logical next step. Welcome to the team (again^^)!

3. Patch 8.1 PreparationThe next patch brings a new pet battle dungeon: Gnomeregan, as well as a new family achievement. Family Battler! Both sections are set up and can be filled with strategies already.

4. New alternatives sortingA tiny change, but it will have some obvious effects. I made a tiny tweak to the sorting of alternatives.
Before:Favourite > Pets in Collection > Tags > Average Rating
Now:Favourite > Pets in Collection > Average Rating > Tags

Having tags overrule the rating had some weird effects, and with the rating and favourite system being used widely now, it makes more sense to swap this around. Sorry for any confusion this might cause now!

5. Hazelnutty’s videosLong established in the pet battling world, Hazelnutty is putting out some awesome videos that I can only recommend.
Very recently she published a video with her best tips and tricks for BfA pet battling, including some very nice words about Xu-Fu!
It’s only appropriate to return the favour, so go watch the video and ideally her channel, it’s worth it for every pet battler:
Watch the video

6. More absence, oh no.Last but not least I have another personal note. The last two weeks of October I will be almost entirely offline and there will not be much new coming from my side on Xu-Fu. That might stretch well into November - depending on how this “real life” thing works out. But I’m not gone for good and will continue working on the page once I’m back! Promise :-)

Hazelnutty has saved me more than a few times. I only have one minor issue with her pet battle videos. They are 2-4 years ago and some of the moves have changed. She suggests moves that can no longer be used together. I still love them and I am a subscriber, just a little pet peeve of mine. Another great one is Lapz Gaming. He is simple and to the point. Sometimes his strategies are almost too easy. Love Xu-Fu's site, thanks for all your hard work.

I'm noticing that some pets are showing as not collected on strategy pages, when I do actually have them. My pet collection is up to date, and when I perform a search for it, it does appear on my pet collection page. I'm seeing them specifically today on the BFA Family Battler strats, but not sure if it is site wide or not.

Oooh, even within the BFA strats, the same pet is showing as not collected on one strat, and collected on another. Same pet, Snarly. This happened with another pet as well but I can't remember off the top of my head which one it was.

Hey! Could you check please if the pet is perhaps used in this strategy several times? That's a common thing then. If that's not the case, please tell me which strategies that is exactly and I'll have a look! Thanks!

Hi Aranesh! Is it possible that if it's an option in one of the other pet slots, but not the one selected specifically, that it shows as not collected? Let me see if I can locate the strats that I'm seeing it on :)

I have all four of the fishing daily pets, (Snarly/Toothy/Muckbreath/Chuck). Snarly (mine is lvl 1) is default chosen in the second slot, and shows as not collected ("Your pet: Missing") in slot 3, regardless of me selecting one of the other three fishing daily pets that is NOT Snarly in slot 2. I have a lvl 25 Toothy who I'd imagine should be default chosen in slot 2?

I'll look for the other battles where they use 2 of those four fishing daily pets and see if they all do it or not.

It seems that if the pets are the first ones selected for x spot, that if they are options in any slot to the right, they are shown as not collected. If there is a pet autoselected in x slot to the right, it's *not* showing as not collected in the slot to the left. (I hope that's clear? The logic follows that in instances where this is happening from what I have specifically noted since I started looking for the logic pattern)

Also, my pet that is 25 of the 4 options available is not being autoselected for a space where it's an option, which I seem to remember not being the case before, I thought it always selected the 25 option? Is this change, perhaps, because pets automatically adjust in level to your pets, so it's not going to pick your 25 first? If that's the case...I'd kind of like the option to retain the ability to just select my 25s site-wide?

Hazelnutty has quickly become my favorite guide producer, couldn't have done Uldir without her. It's very information-dense, but I'd rather pause a few seconds to process everything, than listen to other guide makers ramble on about irrelevant stuff.
I'll check out her pet battle guides too!

Hazelnutty is a gift! I really like her videos for the same reasons, too! I just want to see what it looks like and know what it does in a short window of time, and she does exactly that. And she's enjoyable to listen to!

Congratulations !(but next time please say at first that it's a random roll, it was amusing to find a good place and create a fitting mog but I have to admit that I don't participate to random roll contest, rng and me are ennemies since forever XD)

- The 2 pet codes only work for EU, sorry!
- You have to post with a Xu-Fu account. If you don't have one, top right to sign up, they are free :-)
- Your post must include a link to an image of your character with your favourite pet of choice. Pirate clothing optional but for extra style!
- You can post a picture until October 3rd. Shortly after, the 2 winners will be selected at random
- Winners are announced here and notified via direct message on Xu-Fu's. If someone doesn't claim their code, new winners will be selected.
- Only one entry per user, obviously :-)

Thanks everyone for reaching out about volunteer positions! Still looking, so if you're interested, give me a shout on Discord.

Meanwhile, I have a few news to share around Xu-Fu:

1. A warm (re-) Welcome to the first three volunteers: Nyari, Remte and Morazor!

Nyari will work mostly as News Writer and Content Creator for the German version of the page and I will help develop some better tools to make localized versions of the page easier to navigate.

Remte has always been very active in posting advice and finding errors on the page and will now be a Strategy Curator.

Morazor is the author of Magpie and as such the role Content Creator can't be more fitting!

2. You now have the option to include the strategy steps within rematch strings! It is on by default, but you have a slider right below the Rematch button to turn that off, if you wish.

3. A shout out to all strategy creators: I will remove the option to modify tags. Unfortunately, the tags system has been used very inconsistently, and sometimes even to push new strategies to the top by adding every positive tag available without them being true. In the future, more tags will be automated (especially the "Reliable" one), and only strategy curators will have access to tags. In that light, I will also remove all custom tags that have been added so far.
Sorry for any confusion or inconvenience because of this!

To point 3: Is it even possible to include strategy in the rematch string? It hasn't worked for me yet with any import. Yes I made sure the slider was in the correct position, I definitely have the strategy information in the paste.

A couple of minor issues:
1. The rematch string no longer includes minimum health (I think it used to?).
2. Some characters are encoded, e.g. apostrophes appear as #039.
3. This might be a Rematch bug. Sometimes the notes are empty after import. Strategy 1706 is an example of this (if you manually edit out the rematch string that the creator included in the notes then it imports okay).

1. It was never minimum health but minimum level. That should still be in! If it isn't somewhere, let me know please!
2. Fixed :-)
3. That's a bummer. It's because in this specific strategy, there is a rematch string within the comment which rematch recognizes and tries to add 2 teams. If you remove the rematch string manually from the import string comment, it will work. There is, unfortunately, nothing I can do about it.

With the addition of user-created-strategies, Xu-Fu has entered a new phase and is supporting more and more pet battlers out there in the world. Time to become a bit more structured and organised!
Volunteers have been a key part of Xu-Fu and I am both proud and grateful for the help I have received. Going forward, I want to make it a better experience for everyone involved, with a clearer role description, better access rights and more decision power for those who help with the project.

Here is what I need to make Xu-Fu even better:

News Writer (1-2)
Are you always up to date with everything pet related that’s going on? Would you like to moderate the News section of one of the most visited pet battling pages worldwide? Get in touch, I would love to hand over the News to someone who is eager to share news and updates on the pet battling world!
You’ll have access to my own article editor and it will be your decision what to post and when to post. And if you need any new tools, I am more than happy to add what you need!

Content Creator As a Content Creator, you own a section of the page containing your favourite topic. Are you a mad pet PvP mastermind who wants to share your insights? Do you love the funny interactions pets do and want to write about it? Or maybe you created a tool that you want to host somewhere and Xu-Fu’s might be a good place? Let me know, let’s discuss, and if we agree on it, you’ll get your own section with full editing rights and my support if you need any custom features coded.

Strategy Curator (1-2)
Every day new strategies are added to Xu-Fu’s. As a strategy curator, you will be the checks and balances. That does not mean going through each and every strategy to test it, but to have an eye on trends, to identify the very best ones and flagging them as staff picks. It could also mean reaching out to strategy creators who made mistakes and asking them if they want to fix that, or worst case, removing it from the page. This role comes with full editing rights for all strategies on Xu-Fu.

TranslatorMany parts of the page are being auto-translated already, but there are some gaps and some languages are not covered at all. If you visit Xu-Fu in your native language and want to help fill those gaps, please get in touch! The same languages as World of Warcraft are supported: German, French, Spanish, Italian, Polish, Russian, Portuguese, Korean and Chinese (simplified).

Any of this sounds good to you? Please send me a private message on Discord (Aranesh#6150) and let’s talk!

When Legion was released, I struggled very hard to keep up with the world quests and test+add strategies. Now with BfA, since everyone can upload strategies, every one of the new quests has a number of different alternatives available already.

It worked out very well, all thanks to you, the creators of all those strategies out there. A BIG THANK YOU!

And as a little treat I've just completed the last important feature for it: A "My Strategies" section!
Hover over your name on the top right, check it out. You'll see a summary of your strats, how they do, and you get notifications if someone writes a comment on your strategy :-)

Love what you've done with the site since I used to use it back in Legion. One thing that I think would be very useful though is a summary page that lists all the pets sorted by how many different strategies they are used in. maybe even cross referenced with your collection to only show pets you don't have already. That way you would better know what pets are used a lot and would be worth getting.

Not sure if I'm a big fan of the "upload strategies" feature. Each time I go back to a strat that I've used before (and saved the team because it worked), the front page for that particular team is now a new team and I either have to search for mine which worked before or sometimes I try out the new one and it doesn't work at all and I'm scrolling through the list trying to figure out which one was mine again. I liked the old way where the tried and true teams were the first on the page at least instead of the newest uploaded "well this is what I liked and worked for me" shows up. It's no better than scrolling through Wowhead comments almost. Maybe a ranking system so new strats with low ratings fall down off the main page would be a better way to handle newly uploaded strats at least.

Such a ranking system is already in place, but I think it needs a few tweaks to work better. Strategies rated higher should stay on top. "New" strategies do not get any preference, that is just informational but has no impact on the sorting.
However, what I noticed is that some strategies get filled with positive tags, which do have an impact on the sorting. That's something I have to review and change.

One more thing, if you are logged in and put a favourite (heart) to a strategy, it will always be shown on top for you!

I think the problem is that a new upload has 5 stars, likely due to the person uploading it rating it himself. So if a good one sits at 4.9, the new one will have preference. Probably better to require a certain amount of votes before it goes on top of everything else.

Also, the amount of votes and favourites has an effect as well. Strategies that have many votes (10+ and then different further steps), the value of the star rating is increased. So even if a new strat has 5 stars by the creator, another strategy with 4.5 or so, but with many different voters saying this, will still be rated higher.
This of course only kicks in after a certain time. As long as most strategies are pretty new, it has little effect.